Champkids, a local art organization started by a Roslyn High School student, raised $1,800 for charities at its Lunar New Year youth art competition to help local communities and beyond.

“I didn’t really imagine that this would become such a huge event, such a huge turnout that we had on Saturday,” Champkids founder Allena Kim said. “Just seeing all these kids with their smiles on their faces after winning and being so happy to be together with kids that have the same interests as them—it just makes me so happy.”

Allena, 16, is a Roslyn High School junior who founded her organization Champkids in 2018 at the age of 11. Champkids offers live art competitions where young artists can compete, receive feedback from live judging and participate in the award ceremony all in one day.

The Champkids Lunar New Year art competition was held Saturday at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City and hosted in partnership with Nassau County.

The event featured two art competition categories split by grades: one for kindergarteners through second-graders and the other for third- through fifth-graders.

More than 150 kids took part in the competitions, with the top three artists winning in each category. Overall, more than 500 people attended the competition.

The younger category artists participated in a coloring competition and had an hour to color and draw on a provided coloring page. The older category artists participated in a drawing competition where they were asked to draw motifs related to the Lunar Year on a blank piece of paper.

Winners in the younger category were Stella Xu in first place, Chloe Zhang in second place and Ella Liu in third place. In the older category, Alivia Lin won first place, Alexandria Lu came in second place and Gloria Nan secured third place.

Every cent that Champkids raises is donated to charities, with the designated charity varying from each art competition.

Saturday’s Lunar New Year art competition raised enough money to go toward two charities, both of which Allena said are dear to her heart.

The two charities that were designated donations by Champkids’ recent competition are Tzu Chi Academy, Allena’s former Chinese school of 12 years, and Buddha’s Light International Association.

Champkids raised $800 for Tzu Chi Academy, which will go towards purchasing lion heads and drums for its lion dance team.

Tzu Chi Academy, based in Oyster Bay, participated in the Lunar New Year competition festivities with its lion dance team performing for participants and families.

Buddha’s Light International Association is an international NGO that promotes equity and social progress.

Allena said Champkids’ donation of $1,000 to the organization will go toward its 10 adopted villages in India to address poverty crises. She said she hopes their donation will help to end the cycles of poverty that the villages are living through by bolstering their access to education.

Since the founding of Champkids, more than 1,000 young artists have been able to engage in the programs and a multitude of organizations have received charitable donations from its proceeds.

Allena said that unlike many of her peers, she found that sports was not her forte despite multiple attempts at different sports. Instead, she found joy and passion in art specializing in mixed-media using mediums like acrylic paints and oil pastels.

But through searching for her talents at a young age, she said she also understood that many other kids may have the same struggle in finding their creative passions and an outlet to express them.

“Some kids are like me,” Allena said. “They don’t really enjoy sports, they don’t really have an outlet to compete like sports competitions.”

Many art competitions are mail-in competitions, spanning weeks or months while  contenders wait for results after mailing in their submissions.

But Allena’s art competition model eliminates the waiting game, providing same-day results for young artists to compete and flex their artistic talents.

Allena herself has participated in a number of art competitions, even going on to win some, but now she is taking on the responsibilities of the art competition host rather than the artist.

“Now I want to give [this experience] to other kids,”  Allena said.

Champkids is fully run by student volunteers, with about 15 high schoolers helping to produce the art competitions – from organizing to hosting the day’s events.

From here, Allena has big dreams for Champkids as she looks to expand the organization to open chapters throughout the state and nationally.